In her recently released memoir, Hourglass, Dani Shapiro says she used to teach her students that writers need distance from the event or events they intend to explore in memoir.
I was quite certain that we could not write directly from our feelings, but only the memory of our feelings. How else to find the necessary ironic distance, the cool remove? How else to shape a narrative but from the insight and wisdom of retrospect? (93)
Distance Leads to Fading
I’ve heard this same advice from many sources but struggled with it in practice. Certain experiences in my life have seemed like perfect fodder for memoir, but I waited to write. Time has passed. Years. At this point, critical details and insights have faded—and, yes, even the feelings. That “cool remove” she speaks of seems more like evaporation.
Shapiro says her thoughts on the timing are shifting, though. She now sees that “[e]ven retrospect is mutable. Perspective, a momentary figment of consciousness.”
To me, her new approach feels like a much better way, enlivened by real-time action and energy and all the rich texture of now.
Tell the Story While Inside of It
She writes: “If retrospect is an illusion, then why not attempt to tell the story as I’m inside of it? Which is to say: before the story has become a story?”
I wonder how many stories have mutated as we wait.
It happened to me—to a story I thought I might write. I guess I was waiting for perspective before writing it down. Well, and time. I didn’t have time to write as I navigated the memoir-worthy events, but had I been savvier and recognized the power of snatching the story while it was fresh—while the feelings surged with the most intensity, I would have done it. I wish I’d jotted more notes, saved more texts, recorded more observations with my smartphone’s voice recorder.
Blogging in Real Time
The way people used to blog seemed to follow this approach. Those who wrote from their lives seemed to blog almost in real time, attempting to tell their stories while they were in the midst of them.
Journaling in Real Time
Those committed to keeping a journal, like Anaïs Nin, a faithful—some might say obsessive—diarist, wrote, “It was while writing a Diary that I discovered how to capture the living moments.”
Telling a Story as Memoir in Real Time
Capturing those living moments is the work of a diarist and perhaps some journalists, and Dani Shapiro’s comment makes me wonder if it’s also the work of a memoirist when we capture them in real time and write inside the story.
Diaries and journals and this idea of a real-time memoir help us look at life even as we’re living it. Again, Anaïs Nin said, “We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.”
We write to remember the moment, the feeling. We write to document the way it changed us. Is there a story here? Or just a series of snapshots? Was this a passing emotion or a transformative event?
Capture the Living Moments
Try it.
One way or another, whether or not it’s a story of transformation, capture the living moments. Try to tell the story as you’re inside of it.
Record the songs that play and the color of clothes on the day you receive life-altering information by email.
Take note of the way the old 90-pound dog heaves himself up from his nap and moves through the house and down the hallways on creaky joints to greet the college kids when they walk in the door.
Listen for the woodpecker tapping the maple tree as you talk on the phone with your father.
Don’t decide yet if it matters; write inside the story that has yet to be a story.
After all, if not now…when?
Don’t Wait
If you wait to write until after the old dog dies, you might forget the way he cuts a corner and slides his side along the doorframe in his hurry to greet the girls.
If you wait, you’ll forget that “Fire and Rain” was piped through the McDonald’s sound system, that your father asked if someone was at the door when he heard the tap-tap-tapping in the background of your call, and that you were wearing jeans with a bit of mustard dried on them when you got the information that flipped your heart on end.
The dried mustard may not matter for the story. But you have it on record. Just in case.
Resources:
- BrainPickings article featuring Anaïs Nin
- Dani Shapiro, Hourglass (Amazon affiliate link)
- Ep 112: My Best Writing Tools to Get More Done (at Home and on the Go)
- Ep 113: An Easy Solution for the Writer with Big Goals and Little Time (write with your voice)
- All podcast episodes
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The podcast is also available Stitcher, and you should be able to search for and find “Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach” in any podcast player.
DeaMoore says
Inspired by one of Madeline L’Engle’s Crosswick Journals, I wrote the story of my father’s recent cancer relapse, and days I helped him through it, as it unfolded. I wrote within days or hours of living the stories. I set a boundary (summer) from the very beginning and wrote only when the story presented itself. The end boundary has been reached. As I read back over the story a few days ago, I realized I could have never written with as much detail from hindsight. So I say this to say, I agree! There is no time like the present to get those details down! I think this is especially true when stress is part of the equation. You think you won’t forget the details, but stress has a way of stealing them. Thanks, Ann, for sharing your insights on the writing process.
Ann Kroeker says
Excellent to hear, Dea. I’m more and more convinced if we write it like that–like a memoir–we will arrive at the story as it’s becoming a story, and we can sense that an event is going to be a story even while we’re in it (perhaps, at times, even when it’s just beginning).
I hope you are able to do something with it sometime.
Marilyn Yocum says
Excellent advice! I had a devastating event come into my life, one I thought would end my writing life and certainly one I’d never want to look back and remember. At the same time, recalling Nora Ephron’s words (“Everything is copy”), I reached for an empty journal. I didn’t have a single word at that moment, but I kept that journal at my elbow. Soon enough, I had things to put in it. Now, years later, I have a rich reservoir from which to draw. I would never have been able to remember from memory even 1/4 of the detail in that journal. It’s a story I didn’t imagine I’d ever want to remember, but the journal entries are now like gold to me.
Ann Kroeker says
Wow. Love the quote (“Everything is copy”) and how it gave you the nudge you needed at that time. And now? Now you have the notes for…whenever. Maybe you’ll never tell it; maybe you’ll share pieces of it. But you’ve got it. The story, from beginning to end, for whatever you want to do with it…even simply to reflect on it all.
Pearl Allard says
Ann, this is huge. It’s permission to write the messy middle as I wade through it. Maybe even share bits of it realtime. And big picture – isn’t all of life somewhere in the messy middle? Thank you!
Ann Kroeker says
Yes, write. Write and share as you feel is appropriate. I do think all of life is messy–even messier than we realize sometimes. Glad you found this helpful for your writing, Pearl. If you write and publish somewhere, would you point me to the finished piece?
Lori says
Yes, writing in real-time does help with the sensory details down the road. And, time can change perspective.
Ann Kroeker says
Ah, yes, you have kept such meticulous notes, and it’s paid off!